Even though we enjoyed a beautiful, warm, sunny day here today, hard core fall is coming. This menu has some heavier, more substantial meals using seasonal produce. Pears are plentiful right now and citrus is coming into its best season soon. You should be able to score some great tasting produce at reasonable prices!








Simple, juicy, and delicious ... everything that's the best of raw plant foods ...

ingredients

• 1 peach, sliced ($.80)
• 1 plum, sliced ($.90)
• 1 apple, sliced ($1.25)
• 1/2 cup blueberries ($.50)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice ($.20)
• 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts ($.50)

directions

1. Slice the fruit, mix together, add a splash of lemon juice and chopped walnuts (a bit of nut milk would be good, too ... like a bowl of fruit cereal).

nutritional information: calories: 137 fat: 1 gr carbs: 33 gr protein: 2 gr






salad

• 1 grapefruit ($.50)
• 2 pears, sliced ($1.40)
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• 1 head romaine, chopped ($1.90)
• 1/4 cup walnuts ($.50)

dressing

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice ($.20)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil ($.30)
• 2 tablespoons agave ($.20)
• pinch nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

directions

1. Cut the grapefruit by first slicing off about 1/4" off the top and bottom.
2. Stand the grapefruit up on a cut side and slice along the outside curve of the fruit, cutting away the skin and pith.
3. Use a sharp knife to cut each grapefruit section away from the membrane.
4. Slice the pears and onions, and chop the lettuce.
5. Toss together and sprinkle the walnuts on top.
6. Whisk together all the dressing ingredients and drizzle over the top.

nutritional information: calories: 304 fat: 17 gr carbs: 40 gr protein: 5 gr










ingredients

• 2 medium zucchini ($1.20)
• 1 carrot ($.15)
• 1 bunch green onions, sliced ($.59)
• 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced ($.50)
• large handful mung bean sprouts ($.75)

sauce

• 4 tablespoons almond butter ($.80)
• 1/2 in piece ginger, peeled
• 1 tablespoon braggs aminos or soy sauce ($.10)
• 1 clove garlic ($.05)
• 1 tablespoon agave ($.10)
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (or to taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons chopped cashews ($.20)

directions

1. Noodle the zucchini and carrot using a vegetable peeler or spiral slicer. 
2. Toss with the bell pepper, green onion, and bean sprouts.
3. In a bullet type blender, puree all the sauce ingredients until very creamy. Because of the high fat content of the nut butter, this can get quite hot while blending. Stop and let it cool for a minute if it becomes too hot for your personal definition of raw.
4. Pour over noodles, toss lightly, serve. 

nutritional information:        calories: 345        fat: 23 gr        carbs: 30 gr         protein: 8 gr





ingredients

• 1 ripe avocado, chopped ($.88)
• 2 bananas, chopped ($.30)
• 3 tablespoons cocoa or cacao powder ($.60)
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
• 2 tablespoons agave ($.20)
• 1/2 dropper liquid stevia
• 1/4 teaspoon orange extract

directions

1. Combine all ingredients in a food processor fitted with an "S" blade and process until very smooth.
2. Add coconut oil to room temperature or warmer ingredients only, otherwise the coconut oil will harden into little lumps before it has a chance to blend.
3. Chill for at least a half hour before serving.
4. Top with a few orange sections and/or pieces of fruit and a pinch of orange rind, if desired.

nutritional information: calories: 321 fat: 16 gr carbs: 41 gr protein: 5 gr

• 4 tablespoons artisana coconut butter ($2.20)
• 4 tablespoons artisana cashew butter ($2.35) 
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 3 dates ($.60)
• 2 tablespoons cilantro leaves ($.10) 
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• juice of one lime ($.50)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 cucumber, sliced into noodles ($.89)
• 1/2 avocado, chopped ($.88)
• 1 medium onion, minced
• 2 stalks celery, minced ($.20)
• small bunch cilantro leaves ($.05)
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved ($.30)
• red pepper flakes

1. In a blender, process the coconut butter, cashew butter (almond butter will work as well), water, dates, cilantro, garlic, red pepper flakes, cayenne, lime juice, salt and pepper. 
2. Puree until as smooth as possible.
3. Cut the cucumber into noodles and put in bowls with the avocado, celery, cilantro, and cherry tomatoes. 
4. Using a wire mesh strainer, strain the coconut and nut butter soup base. This will take out any larger pieces of dates or spices. A higher powered blender may make this step unnecessary. 
5. Add a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.

nutritional information:      calories: 537       fat: 44 gr       carbs: 33 gr       protein: 11 gr













ingredients

• 1/2 cup walnuts ($1.00)
• 1/2 cup raisins ($.85)
• 3 plums, sliced thinly ($3.00)
• 3 tablespoons coconut butter ($1.65) 
• 2 tablespoons coconut nectar ($.40)

• banana ice cream ($.50)
• blackberry puree

ingredients

• 3 cups chopped romaine (or favorite green) ($1.00)
• 1 cup cubed pineapple, frozen ($2.00)
• 1 banana, sliced and frozen ($.20)
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice (optional) ($.20)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla ($.10)
• 1 cup water
• 10 ice cubes
• stevia to taste (optional)

directions

• In a high powered blender, puree the greens until liquefied and very smooth. 
• Add the rest of the ingredients and puree until smooth.

nutritional information:      calories: 156      fat: 0 gr      carbs: 42 gr      protein: 3 gr







ingredients

• 1 avocado, chopped ($1.25)
• 1tablespoon finely chopped celery ($.05)
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped onion ($.05)
• 2 teaspoons mustard ($.05)
• 2 teaspoons mayo  (use something like Veganaise or make your own) ($.10)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• Lettuce and optional tomato for serving

directions

• Coarsely chop the avocado, add the remaining ingredients, then stir gently until evenly incorporated. 
• Store leftovers for up to a day or two in an air tight container.

nutritional information:       calories: 280       fat: 37 gr      carbs: 15 gr      protein: 3 gr

• Prepare the red and yellow bell pepper, mushrooms, olives, and onion and place in a medium sized bowl. 
• In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, syrup, onion powder, garlic, basil, oregano, salt, and pepper. Pour over the prepared vegetables. Allow to marinate for at least a half hour, but it can marinate as long as a day.
• When ready to eat, simply pour the marinated veggies and marinade over a portion of spiralized zucchini noodles and toss.

• 2 cups almonds ($8.00)
• 1 1/2 cups dates, pitted and chopped ($4.00)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder ($1.00)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon orange extract
• Cocoa powder for rolling

• In a food processor fitted with an “S” blade, process the almonds until finely ground. This takes about a minute. 
• Add in the pitted and chopped dates, cocoa powder, vanilla and orange extract. 
• Process again until the mixture begins to clump together. 
• Using a tablespoon, scoop out even sized balls, and roll between hands to shape. 
• For the final finish, roll each truffle lightly in cocoa powder.

Aftertought ...

What does a mostly raw, some cooked vegan grocery cart look like? Well, mine looks like this ...




How about you?

Tumeric is famously anti-inflammatory and can be enjoyed many different ways, including juiced raw. But today, I wanted to pass on this super easy tea (psst, it's not raw!).

I've been drinking it almost every morning for a couple months now and it's still delicious to me, which is a good thing. Turmeric has so many beneficial qualities ... let us count the ways (scroll below for the tea how-to).

1. Anti-inflammatory.
Turmeric, the brightly colored spice that gives curry it's intense color, contains beneficial compounds that have positive health benefits. The main compounds are the curcuminoids and the most important of these is curcumin. One of the most beneficial things curcumin can do is lessen inflammation, which is implicated in most Western diseases.

To be fair, inflammatory responses are a good thing. We wouldn't be able to wage a defense against bacteria and viruses, or injuries, for example, without a strong inflammatory response. However, too much of a good thing can cause problems. Chronic inflammation has been implicated in many diseases that plague us today, including heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and obesity. Curcumin can reduce inflammation as effectively as some anti-inflammatory medications, but without the side effects. One of the ways it does this is by inhibiting (NF)-kB.  
 
2. Antioxidant
Oxidation is a chemical reaction that produces free radicals. Free radicals have unpaired electrons. These lonely little fragments damage cells and wreak havoc and destruction wherever they go. Antioxidants, like curcumin, terminate the chain reactions that lead to unpaired electrons and, therefore, free radicals and the damage they cause. Seriously, it's the radicals, man.
 
3. Heart Health
Almost 50% of Americans will die prematurely from heart disease. Heart disease and chronic inflammation are so closely linked that inflammation is thought to be an atherogenic response (atherogenic means it causes atherosclerosis, aka, cardiovascular disease, heart disease, and is also peripheral artery disease). It's even thought possible that the slight benefit sometimes derived from statins could be due to their anti-inflammatory properties. Reducing inflammation is a vital key to reducing heart disease.Curcumin is a potent COX-2 inhibitor, that

4. Cancer
Curcumin is being investigated as prevention and treatment for cancers such as that of the colon and pancreas. Chronic inflammation and free radicals promote cancer. Reducing those conditions can be preventive and curcumin works well at both. 
  
5. Arthritis
 Inflammation is an important mechanism in arthritis. Curcumin acts as a COX-2 inhibitor in the same way pharmaceutical drugs such as Celebrex do, but without the dangerous side effects. The tea below, as well as curcumin supplements can ease the pain of arthritis and rejuvenate mobility.

7. Alzheimer's 
India has a low incidence of Alzheimer's, possibly linked to higher intake of curcumin. Because inflammation plays such a big part in most disease, including Alzheimer's, it can be protective and preventative.

8. Brain Function
Alzheimer's is not the only thing that can go awry in brain function, and again, inflammation is implicated. In this case, it's known as neuroinflammation, or inflammation specifically in the brain and reducing that can help overall brain function. 
   
9. Depression
Depression and anxiety are often linked to brain inflammation (this is why going gluten free can help mood, as well). It seems to offer some improvement and relief to those who have depression.

10. Gall Bladder Function 
Curcumin causes the gall bladder to contract, which stimulates bile formation and gall bladder emptying and a freely flowing gallbladder is a happy, healthy one (unless you have a stone blocking the exit, which can cause a painful gallbladder attack).

11. Pepper
I can't talk about turmeric and curcumin without also mentioning black pepper. The Piperine in black pepper increases the absorption of curcumin by 2000% (that's 20x). So, add a little bit of black pepper to whatever you make with turmeric for the greatest benefit. It tastes good, too.

*Do not use turmeric or curcumin if you are using blood thinners such as Warfarin or if you have existing gall bladder disease.




 This tea (and this salad dressing, too) are delicious ways to get a healthy dose of turmeric.


ingredients

• 1 orange, peeled and chopped ($.70)
• 1 teaspoon powdered tumeric ($.10)
• 1 teaspoon caraway seeds($10)
• a few black peppercorns, or pinch of black pepper
• stevia or sweetener, if desired ($.10)

directions

1. Place the orange, turmeric, and caraway seeds in a large saucepan with four cups water. 
2. Bring to a boil over high heat and continue to boil for about five minutes. This will reduce any bitterness in the turmeric.
3. Add the peppercorns or pinch of pepper and steep for a minute or two. 
4. Strain through a fine mesh strainer into mugs and and the sweetener of your choice, if desired. 

• 2 bananas, frozen and sliced ($.50)
• 1 cup frozen strawberries ($1.00)
• 4 tablespoons flax seeds, ground ($.40)
• 1 cup almond milk ($.45) 
• a few almonds, chopped

• In a blender, combine all ingredients and puree until very smooth.
• Garnish with a few chopped almonds, if desired.

• 3 bananas, sliced and frozen ($.60)
• 1 1/2 cups strawberries, frozen ($1.69)
• 1/2 cup blueberries, frozen ($.60)
• stevia and/or agave, to taste

A "concrete" is a very thick shake ... thick enough to have to eat it with a spoon. And this is a fun and tasty breakfast or treat for anyone.

In a food processor fitted with an "S" blade, process the frozen bananas until creamy. Add water as needed until the mixture is a thick, soft serve ice cream consistency. Add about half the frozen strawberries and process again until smooth. Add a couple droppers of stevia and/or agave, until you like the level of sweetness. You may not need any sweetener at all if you use very ripe bananas.

Spoon out and set aside about half the mixture. Then, add more frozen strawberries to what remains, and process again until smooth. Spoon out and set aside about half of this mixture, as well. Finally, add the frozen blueberries to what is left and process again until smooth.

Layer the different mixtures in a glass. And don't forget a spoon!

Planted 365. 

Blueberry Smoothie Jar is a delicious recipe from Plant-Based Meal Prep by Jackie Sobon from the website Vegan Yack Attack. This gorgeous book is full of recipes (100+), info, and tips to successfully prep for vegan and plant-based meals.

See the FULL post at:
https://www.rawon10.com/blueberry-smoothie-jar-plant-based-meal-prep/

I'm counting 16 March as day 0, being when the government actually started getting serious about reducing the rate of infection spreading.

Will cut all these entries and tag Covid, so feel free to block or ignore or filter if that's best for you.

Day -2 (Saturday): After much dithering decided I did want to enjoy my last planned excursion before cancelling everything. Travelled to London with ghoti_mhic_uait, attended a Pop-up Painting event in a fairly crowded room under a pub, and then went out for dinner in a half-empty, very nice South Bank restaurant. I suspect if that was a mistake I'll never know. Mainly I feel glad that I got three really nice dates with my three partners in the last semi-normal week. One of them involved staying in being coupley, but two of them involved trips to London probably later than was wise.

Anyway the pop-up painting was cool. They set you up with a canvas, brushes, acrylic paints, and an apron, and there's a reference image to copy. In our case it was loosely based on this Banksy, but an interpretation of it, not exactly that picture. The first hour or so, they let the participants just play around with paints, doing whatever we liked to fill in the background. I pretty much just copied the reference image's sunset sky, because I wanted to get comfortable with using the paints, mixing colours and creating textures, more than I wanted to try to exercise creativity. Then there was a break with wine, then in the last 40 minutes the facilitators talked through copying the silhouette of the girl, in a fair amount of detail, like, make a C shape here, this line should be at a 45 degree angle, etc. You were still allowed to paint something else if you wanted to, but again, I found following directions quite helpful. The audience were relatively diverse; mostly young-ish but seemed to be a good cross-section of the London public.

At the moment ghoti_mhic_uait can eat basically only protein and needs a lot of meat anyway, and I'm vegetarian and tend to get most of my calories from carbs. Ghoti miraculously managed to find a place that could feed both of us, this rather lovely Eastern European place. I had creamed mushrooms with some latke-ish things, and a sort of lentil pie with cucumber salad and a lot of capers, and Ghoti had some really impressive-looking pickled herring, and some roast duck with apples and red cabbage. It was very exciting, and goodness knows if we'd ever get a table for a normal weekend. They're also very into their vodka and cocktails, which we didn't sample but I might be interested to try a more alcohol-focused event another time.

London was quiet but not completely a ghost town. Almost everybody who booked showed up for the painting, but it was the last one the organization ran, they're cancelling going forward.

Day -1 (Sunday): The synagogue ran Sunday school as normal, on the grounds that schools are still open. But two of the teachers (who are related to each other) didn't show, so I had to take two classes. And in fact, of my expected 10 children across two classes, only three showed up, and we had only 14 of our roster of 50 overall. So most likely we're not going to bother running the last two classes before Pesach, but it's not definitely cancelled yet. In the afternoon OSOs and their children came over for roleplaying, which again had been planned for a while and didn't seem dangerous enough to cancel.

Day zero (Monday): We had known since Friday that we'd been given a week to close the whole campus where I work (bar "essential" staff, mostly those working directly on Covid responses in the lab), and send everybody to work from home for an indefinite period, probably minimum several months. My team had a meeting about how we would handle the transition, and agreed that there was really no reason for most of us to return to the site after yesterday. My lovely line manager has been handling all the disaster response for the last several weeks, basically cancelling everything we do because nearly everything we do is... run international conferences. She was somewhat hysterical by yesterday, but just about holding things together. She very kindly offered to give me a lift home so I could take my computer equipment. We're allowed to take our ergonomic chairs and even our desks, or there's budget to set up home offices, though I was fine with just my laptop and a decent sized screen. Shit is serious.

We detoured via a lost property office to retrieve my wallet which had fallen out of my bag on the coach to work; the coach company tracked me down via a dental appointment card which led to the local council who called me before I cancelled the cards and before I got trapped on the other side of a quarantine barrier from my account access tokens. On the journey she put the radio on and we heard the government announcement.

I am technically in the high risk category as I have chronic asthma. I don't think my asthma is particularly "severe" but it probably would be if I got pneumonia. I haven't really fully processed thinking of myself as one of the "vulnerable" people rather than one of the healthy people who need to act to protect others. Since I'm working from home anyway, I don't have a whole lot of reason to need to go out for the next several weeks. But realistically it's gonna be months, isn't it? I had a bit of a feeling of being sent home to die when we were packing up the office. I have about the degree of death-fear that I get when my period is late; it's not that likely that I actually have Covid-19, it's not that likely that if I do get it I will get complications, and even if I do get complications I might still survive it. I'm a little scared of social collapse, but only a little, I can't really picture, like, mass starvation or something.

Day 1 (Tuesday): I worked from home. I talked to jack a lot (he's very tolerant of my extrovert need to talk things through when it's emotionally scary). We took a car trip to his (deserted) office to pick up computer equipment for him to also work from home for the duration, and didn't interact with any other humans.

I am still undecided about whether I really will isolate myself completely, though the guidelines include me in the category of people who should. I will quit teaching Sunday school and attending services, which is likely to be academic anyway as I'm fairly certain the synagogue will close within the next few days. For now I intend to keep seeing my OSOs; they are ten minutes walk away and our lives are so intermingled that we probably all have the same infection status.

Personal status: feels like the beginning of a mild cold.
Social circle tally: one case, two acquaintances with suspicious symptoms. Nobody I've been in physical contact with within a month though.

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Day 3 (Wednesday): successful social distancing, yay. I worked from home, I came into contact with no humans except jack.

Work tried to establish ways to keep in touch, socially as well as for specific work concerns. We have just moved to a new system, Cisco Webex, for conference calls, and it's really not holding up to the volume of everybody suddenly moving to WFH. So we had a slightly hilarious team coffee chat, when half the participants had no audio and we ended up playing charades.

Mood-wise, I felt slightly manic all day. Every time I had to communicate with someone at work I used way too many words, and I got plenty done but everything felt like it was in a massive rush and slightly out of control.

I also successfully persuaded my mother, and my Stoke community, not to hold big Passover seders with crowds of vulnerable people travelling from all over to gather in a small room and share meals. It is going to be really awful to miss a big seder with my family of origin for the first time in my 41 years of life. But better than infecting my over-70 parents or my paralysed brother. And the Stoke community are breaking a streak of even more decades, and they grumped that I (along with the Chief Rabbi of their movement, the United Synagogue) am overreacting, but they're not risking the health of their various elderly and frail members, so that's good.

Today I mostly worked from home, but I had to go out for, of all things, dental surgery. I'd assumed it just wouldn't happen in the middle of a pandemic, but a tooth extraction is sufficiently urgent that it went ahead. The poor receptionist was absolutely frantically sanitizing every surface continuously.

I had never had a tooth taken out before today. Really rubbish first, I must say! The dentist was super lovely, kind without being patronizing, but I found myself very close to panic. The actual operation lasted only a couple of minutes and the local anaesthetic was the (not very bad) worst part of it, but anyway. I decided to walk home in order to calm myself down, though jack did offer me a lift. Then I met up with ghoti_mhic_uait and we went for another walk together, which did a lot for my general mood and happiness.

Town was quieter than usual, but not completely dead; there were enough walkers, cyclists and joggers out and about that it wasn't entirely easy to maintain the prescribed 2 metre separation from everybody. Also businesses, including pubs and other social gathering spots, are still open (because the government are trying to make individual businesses rather than insurers or the state assume the risk of telling individuals not to go to bars, but not telling bars to actually close), and were quiet but had some customers.

Personal status: If I had the beginning of a mild cold before, I now feel I have the end of a mild cold. Sore throat which I can't tell if it's an infection or a reaction to having my mouth poked about.
Social circle tally: One case, four with suspicious symptoms. All online acquaintances so far.

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Well, as they say, that escalated quickly.

Day 5 (Friday): Stayed home all day with jack. We ordered takeaway for our date night while we still can. The delivery guy wore a proper facemask.

Day 6 (Saturday): Woke up feeling kind of grim. Decided, on consultation with my partners, that I was fairly sure it was just a cold, so we agreed I would go ahead with my planned evening with cjwatson and the children.

In the morning I virtually 'attended' a livestreamed service, which is a really really new thing for my community who normally ban telecoms and electronics on the Sabbath. It was weird, but I felt good for praying with the community even if I wasn't actually interacting with them directly. In the afternoon I did a virtual play readthrough over Zoom, organized by the lovely wildeabandon. It was really really fun, and I got to see the faces of friends I haven't seen for ages, as well as a couple of internet acquaintances I had no mental image of previously. The play was Loves labours lost and I played a couple of small but fun roles, Lady Katharine, a slightly bitchy court woman, and Sir Nathaniel, a pompous curate.

And then I walked to my partners' house, and it was sunny and seemed basically normal. Plus I was feeling completely better by mid afternoon. I took a winding route to stay most of 2m away from any other pedestrians. We played Labyrinth and watched TV and I stayed the night.

In the morning (Sunday) there was more TV and another game, Robot turtles, a sort of cut-down, child-friendly version of Robo Rally, which the children have got much better at since we last played. And we walked part way together to metamour's house where there was mother's day planned, which I didn't join in with, I went home to jack. We went out to the local shop, I walked with him to enjoy the spring weather and he did the actual shopping, as I'm in theory more vulnerable than him.

Sunday evening I did my chevruta (traditional paired Jewish text study), which has always been online because my partner is in New York, and we had a long and pleasant video call with some old friends of jack's I don't see often enough.

Today, day 8, well, jack and I stayed home, mostly working. And anxiously watching the news of how most of the country treated the weekend as a bonus bank holiday and flocked to tourist spots and crowded into parks and gardens. It was kind of obvious the restrictions would have to get stricter, if that was how people were interpreting more gentle restrictions.

Then they cancelled the daily "briefing" (I haven't really been listening to them as it's mostly just our incompetent prime minister waffling with no substance) for a COBRA meeting. I carried out my intended plan of collecting Judith from OSOs' for a Hebrew lesson, and am I ever glad I did. Because as of an hour ago, and starting from tonight, we're no longer allowed out at all except for "essential" purposes. And we're explicitly no longer allowed to meet friends and family. So I don't know how long it will be before I get to hug my partners again.

In a way, lockdown isn't very different from how we were already behaving, with one vulnerable person in each of our three houses (me and metamour have asthma, girlfriend is pregnant). We were already going out only once a day for exercise, we were already only visiting shops to buy, like, food. But what it has taken away from us is that we can no longer bounce between the three houses, treating the polycule as a closed pod. I think our behaviour for the past week has been safe. If I walk a kilometre to my partners' house, that's no different from walking a kilometre in a random direction to get exercise. But the problem is everybody thinks they're an exception, (and multi-household poly relationships are never thought of in official rulings), so now it's forbidden.

The announcement says three weeks, but I think what's actually going to happen is that people will again not take the restrictions seriously and it will have to be extended.

Personal status: I thought I was doing ok, and the tighter restrictions are almost certainly necessary and not really a surprise. But it hurts.
Social circle tally: three cases, including one person I see face to face (though not for at least a month). 8 mostly online acquaintances with suspicious symptoms.

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Adapting to the new normal.

Day 9 (Tuesday): Worked from home. Did my daily exercise by walking past the house where OSOs are quarantined so we could wave to each other from a distance. We actually ended up having a conversation, them on their doorstep, me several metres away. Which is perhaps stretching the no gathering thing a little but I think the risk is low and the psychological benefit is enormous. I have vastly more cope knowing I can still see and talk to my partners.

Day 10: (Wednesday): Worked from home. Failed to secure online delivery for now. Called my parents who reported that they were doing fine and that my doctor cousin had completely randomly, for no reason at all, told them they need to isolate from my brother within the household. I said that sounded over the top. But then I spoke to my brother and it turned out parents left out an extremely salient fact, namely that they had been in recent contact with someone symptomatic. Called my parents again, and talked them through sensible in-house isolation precautions. Part of the reason my brother is quarantining with them is because they have a big house with multiple kitchens and bathrooms, so hopefully this is doable. But I've been kind of tearing my hear out over all this.

Day 11: (Thursday): Another exercise walk and distanced chat with OSOs. Again, felt much better for that. I noticed that the local corner shop is observing proper social distancing, with only a few people allowed in the shop at a time, and everybody else queuing outside actually at 2m separation.

Took part in a rehearsal for running Saturday's service purely over Zoom. (Unlike last week, nobody is going to the synagogue building at all, so we will need to coordinate between people in different locations.) There are lots of probably more exciting options for livestreamed shabbat services, but if you would like to virtually join ours on Saturday (and hear / see me fake-read the Torah), PM me for the Zoom link. I'm not putting it on the public internet because scumbags have been hacking Zoom-based services in order to harass Jews :-(

Day 12 (today): Pleasantly boring day. jack did some shopping in a locally owned shop, which was quieter than Tesco.

Personal status: In spite of being worried about my family of origin, I am getting used to this situation and basically feel ok. Also I still / again have mild cold symptoms. Tracking makes me paranoid, but also makes me realize just how unreasonably susceptible I am to mild respiratory stuff. I've pretty much constantly had a mild cough, with occasional chest soreness or shortness of breath ever since I started paying attention. I'm pretty sure it's chronic asthma with rhinitis and unreasonable sensitivity to normal endemic viruses, rather than acute Covid, but 'pretty sure' isn't ideal with the stakes this high.

Social circle tally: five cases. Twelve people with suspicious symptoms. Now including some people I see in person, but none recently.

Does anyone have any recommendations for decent online bridge setups? Free as in beer would be good, free as in speech is always a bonus. We can probably download software if needed, but ideally we want to work across multiple different tech eg phones, tablets, laptops with various OSes, so probably web-based is easiest. Also it needs to be at least vaguely usable by people who are not completely computer savvy, though not completely clueless either.

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Small milestones.

A couple of significant milestones just now: it's been a full week since I went within 2m of anyone other than jack. He's not been as fully isolated as I have, since he has no underlying conditions and has been doing our household shopping. Of course making an effort to avoid getting too close to people, but still.

And I've passed the magic 14 days since I last took public transport and intentionally went to venue with a crowd of people. I don't yet feel confident I definitely haven't caught the virus, particularly since I've spent most of the intervening time with very mild almost-certainly-a-cold-but-who-knows symptoms. But the feeling of impending doom is somewhat lessened, knowing that I've been in a two person almost closed pod for most of the significant infectious period.

Anyway, Day 12, Friday, was almost a normal day. I often work from home Fridays in normal life anyway, and I was very absorbed in putting the finishing touches to my online course. And then after 5 I had date night with jack, like we always do, and we cooked together and played a successful episode of Gloomhaven.

Day 13, Saturday, I did online synagogue service again. This time I had a small role in the service, reading something from Leviticus in place of a full Torah reading. And this time it was entirely on Zoom, with nobody physically in the synagogue. It went pretty well and it was nice to see people's faces all over the screen. And another lovely readthrough with wildeabandon and co, the radio play of Gaiman's Stardust, where I had the delightful role of the chief evil witch Morwanneg, and was congratulated on my evilness. And a Zoom party in the evening hosted by ptc24. Finally a phonecall with cjwatson before we both retired. So yeah, basically a very full day of virtual socializing!

Day 14, Sunday, wasn't much quieter. I virtually attended OSOs' church service, since they'd showed up to mine and it seems nice to support each other. It's much more isolated than ours: they literally just have a camera feed of their priest in an empty church, with no interaction with the rest of the congregation. I could hear the Communion wafer snap, which is a weird experience; I've been told it's basically like matzah but I didn't know that it sounds like matzah.

We just about had time for lunch between church and setting up for an online game of bridge, with my brother and parents in one location, and me and Jack in one location, and OSOs and metamour in a third location. Thank you to silveradept for recommending us a nice simple card playing site, Trickster Cards. It's not completely perfect but it's a lot less fiddly than some of the more serious sites we found. We had hoped to use Jitsi for video chat but couldn't get it to work on everybody's assorted devices, so we fell back to Zoom and just put up with redialling every 40 minutes. And I had to leave the gaming table fairly promptly for my online chevruta.

Today, day 15 since the somewhat arbitrary date I started counting, I attended communal weekday prayers, which I basically haven't done since I lived in Sweden in the mid 2000s. Broadcast Zoom service from the movement rabbinic seminary, which was delightful. Not only could I see people's faces on screen, I could see the smattering of fellow Reform Jews who, like me, lay tefillin every day. It's always been a bit lonely knowing that the very great majority of people who lay tefillin don't approve of women, and anyway with normal life commuting I can't usually get to communal prayers on weekdays.

I did some work, though mostly got very distracted by the dashboard of my new course, showing lots of people signing up from just about every corner of the globe. Look, it's an actual real thing out in the world, with 1500 people actually learning from materials I put together! And this evening I have my online Hebrew class as usual, and jack is doing some online roleplaying.

No new symptoms showing up among my immediate social circle in the last few days. However I'm starting to hear of deaths of people I'm connected to at second degree. Two people from partners' church. One of our movement rabbis. The father and grandfather of one of the cleaners at work. I am sad about these people I don't know (I think I might have met R' Kraft once or twice, may his memory be a blessing), but also afraid. Afraid that somehow, I'll run out of sadness and not be able to respond appropriately when someone I know is bereaved. Or that I won't, and I'll just drown in endless grief. Like a lot of these things there's no point buying trouble by worrying about it.

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As of some time last night, I have novel respiratory symptoms. I'm basically fine but it feels safest to act as if I am infected.

My lungs hurt, and it's not the tightness I associate with mild asthma symptoms, or the tired muscle ache / burn I associate with a bad cough (whether asthma or viral). Not badly, but pretty much continuously. I'm coughing a bit but not severely, and I don't feel feverish. I have a slight headache and sore throat, but that could be just about anything including stress. I am somewhat distracted but I've been able to get on with useful work today.

I'm probably being over-cautious, but I feel like the balance of probabilities points towards suspected case. So this morning jack and I activated our self-isolation plan. We've divided up the house so that I "live" upstairs and he stays downstairs apart from using the bathroom. We have separate towels and we're cleaning metal bathroom surfaces constantly. jack has taken on food prep for both of us and he's leaving me plates of food and cups of tea and retreating to the bottom of the stairs.

And we're preparing to avoid leaving the house at all until it's more likely that we're not infectious than that we still are. We have plenty of supplies, and we managed to get an online supermarket delivery order in by virtue of going on the website just after midnight last night, which was fortuitous timing. It's going to suck, more so if my symptoms progress beyond the almost ignorable level, but since we can do this I think it's the right thing.

The most likely (and in some ways comforting) narrative I can come up with is that I picked this up when I had to attend a dental appointment two weeks ago. I had very mild symptoms (including a tell-tale sore throat) within a few days of that surgery, which in retrospect I can imagine might have been the first phase. And now, 12 days after the first symptoms, I have potential lower respiratory tract symptoms, so hopefully this is the second phase. That's comforting because it suggests my source of infection is a necessary medical appointment rather than either something frivolous I did, or just being unlucky even though I've stayed at home except for exercise for ten days now, and jack has been doing minimal necessary shopping with careful social distancing. And if I picked it up at the dentist it's unlikely I infected the dentist or any of his staff or patients. Also, if my guess is right I'm probably approaching the end of the infectious phase.

We are really not sure how long we should maintain full isolation at home. UK guidelines say 7 days from start of symptoms (me, today), or 14 days from contact with a symptomatic person (Jack). But I suspect this is not entirely adequate especially as it's much less restrictive than the WHO advice. If my symptoms don't get any worse than this and jack doesn't get sick at all, which is definitely the brnach of the timeline I'm hoping for, I won't know whether I've actually had Covid. Currently we're thinking that if nothing changes we'll start interacting with eachother again after 7 days, but not go outside until we're more confident the incubation period has passed; I think the safest is 14 days from the end of symptoms but we might not be able to sustain that.

Send hugs and support to jack, please? He's doing amazingly in a somewhat scary situation.

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I'm doing basically fine but continuing to be careful.

I still have the same single worrying symptom I had on Thursday, sore lungs. I don't otherwise feel ill, feverish, tired or anything else, so I'm really second guessing myself over whether isolation was the right choice.

The last few days have been mostly pleasant though stressful for jack who's handling everything on his own and worrying about me getting seriously ill or possibly infecting him.

Friday was 19 days since the government started taking action. I worked in my new upstairs den (previously jack's den.) We had a weird date where jack brought me up a tray with the Shabbat ritual things, I made kiddush sitting at the top of the stairs and he sat at the bottom, and we ate dinner in parallel but at a distance. And then we played Potion explosion over Steam, which worked pretty well.

The weekend was ridiculously lovely, and we were both good and only sunbathed and exercised in our own garden. Saturday, day 20, I went to virtual shul, which on only the second iteration starts to feel almost normal. Bigger than usual congregation, including some of the people who are usually strict about not using electronic technology on Shabbat. And in the afternoon I attended the second half of wildeabandon's Stardust readthrough which was generally satisfying and companionable. And I had a long phonecall with ghoti_mhic_uait.

Sunday, day 21, had slightly fewer online social commitments. We had a lot of time in the sunshine in the garden, remaining carefully distanced. cjwatson came by to wave to me from the street while I looked out of an upstairs window like some ridiculous fairy tale princess. We video chatted to jack's university friends; it's been a long time since the original trio got together since one of them lives in Croatia and has two small children. And I did my online chevruta just like the previous week, slightly sheepishly admitting I was Skyping from bed because I was isolating for basically no reason. And I had a long conversation with cjwatson in the evening.

Since today is day 22, and two weeks of lockdown, it's now been a whole two weeks since I last interacted directly with anyone other than jack. jack has also not left the house or allowed delivery people to come close to him since I got the weird symptoms on Thursday, so five days so far.

I now know eight people who have pretty clearly been through a bout of coronavirus, and 21 who like me are being careful because they have suspicious symptoms.

Thanks to everyone who made nice comments on my last post, I really appreciate all of you.

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Still basically fine, but this one is a bit whiny.

I'm losing track of everything I'm trying to count. This is:

Day 27 since I started counting from vaguely serious government measures.

Day 19 since lockdown and since I last interacted with anyone other than jack.

Day 9 since I had maybe suspicious symptoms and since jack and I last left the house.

Day 3 since jack and I ended internal isolation from each other.

Day 2 of the Omer. In the first century a plague was lifted on 33^rd day; I somehow doubt we are going to be allowed out for picnics a month from now, but it's nice to imagine.

Even though everybody has been incredibly lovely, I'm kind of struggling a bit.

The first couple of days when I thought I might have symptoms, I had basically continuous lung soreness, but no other real symptoms, I wasn't tired or achy or feverish or coughing much more than normal. And since then the lung soreness hasn't completely gone away but it's become intermittent. So I'm not at all certain whether I was ever actually sick, and I'm also not at all certain whether, if I was infected, I'm now better. I feel that morally, we really need to isolate for at least a couple of weeks. Past Thursday (2 full weeks of isolation) I really don't know; I'm not exactly better but maybe I was never infected / infectious in the first place.

I'm a very sedentary person normally, but the complete absence of any physical activity was starting to get to me. During internal isolation I mostly stayed upstairs and jack downstairs, and for 9 days I have lost out on my permitted walks. So I have been getting a bunch of minor problems like back-ache, poor sleep, feeling lethargic; I think these are symptoms of under-exercising and not of the hypothetical virus which I probably don't have. I've tried to get a bit more serious about doing what exercise I can in the back garden, which yes, I know we are very privileged to have. So yesterday I started a C25K equivalent thing, replacing the running intervals with climbing on a stepper machine. That seems to be good, it provides resistance without putting strain on my lungs like climbing hills or stairs sometimes can. And I'm alternating that with some really basic strength exercises (at the moment not even weighted).

So as I reported, the start of Passover on Wednesday-Thursday was lovely. But yesterday, Friday (26 days at home) I found really hard. I'm missing the part of the festivals that happens after the intense liturgical stuff, when I get to spend relaxed time with my people. The middle of Passover, when at least some of my scattered family are still gathered and the seder is done and we can just hang out together. And this year that time happens to exactly span the Easter bank holiday weekend. Normally what happens is that I really revel in Friday and Saturday to focus entirely on jack; work is closed and doesn't need either of us, and our Christian partners are busy with the solemn bit of the Triduum, and most of our friends are either likewise Christian, or they're also on holiday. I am definitely enjoying jack's company but it doesn't feel like a treat this year when it's been just us two for nearly 3 weeks. And in a normal year we then get Sunday and Monday to hang out with OSOs and the children, as guests at their dinner and Easter egg hunt and other relaxed celebrations.

I know a lot of people have cancelled much more exciting bank holiday plans, for lots of people it's the only time they get away for a family holiday, or they were going to travel somewhere exciting, and a good number of my friends are missing Eastercon, and Christians are dealing with a very thin version of what should be a major festival. So I feel very ungrateful for being sad that I miss the umbra of the festival, just an afternoon of family time in one of our homes. But I do miss that, it turns out.

jack admitted, after more than 12 years together, that he doesn't actually like matzo brei. At which point I cried all over him, which probably retroactively justified his never previously mentioning that he doesn't like my Pesach treat. But it's not really the omelette, it's all the treats I'm missing this year. I don't even get my slightly subversive reduced price chocolate eggs this year since the police have apparently decided that buying Easter eggs is a crime. And the timing of isolation means we're a bit low on fresh vegetables, and I'm definitely not going to go hungry but I am going to have a sad Pesach once we run out of my sister's cakes.

jack fixed the practical issue by finding orgs and friends who are willing to deliver fresh vegetables to us. Co-op now do small, limited deliveries, and I followed up rmc28's suggestion of making an order from Kale and Damson who have temporarily switched from supplying the restaurant trade to delivering fresh produce to individual homes, and wonderful ceb really kindly agreed to bring us some mushrooms and other veg to tide us over the bank holiday weekend until the rest shows up. Oh, and J found some Pesach-suitable chocolate in our last big shopping order; I'm not desperately attached to my ordinary milk chocolate being egg-shaped and chocolate is good for feeling weepy and despairing.

Today I am less sad, partly because I'm remembering, and able, to bulk out what I eat during the week when snacks are scarce, and adequate blood sugar does wonders for my mood. But I'm still kinda sad. Lonely, mostly. And not currently coping too well with the uncertainty of when I can consider myself safe to return to the slightly less oppressive regime of being allowed out once a day. Or if I'll even get that at all because we might get a tighter lock-down by the time I'm confident I'm not infectious.

Also nearly a thousand reported deaths yesterday. I think we're not counting deaths thoroughly or consistently, but in as far as that means anything, I have some hope that it's a peak reflecting three weekends ago when everyone was having one last hurrah because the government implemented and communicated lockdown in a really ineffectual way, like announcing on Friday afternoon that the bars would be closed after Friday evening trade, and telling people to go to parks but not gather there. And personally, I have in fact been distancing from others for most of three weeks. Most of a month really; I was only interacting with OSOs for more than a week before even that was forbidden. So either whatever's wrong with me this week is in fact a mild case of Covid, or else I'm in a situation where there's a reasonable chance I will remain uninfected.

I'm very well aware that things could be a lot worse. I'm stuck in a pleasant house with a person I like a lot. And we have a nice garden where I can enjoy the sunshine. We are both being paid our full salary, because we are in fact both able to achieve meaningful work from home. And I have lots of friends who are willing to put in the time and effort to make contact through various telecommunication means. So I feel really self-indulgent even recording that I have a sad this weekend, but hey, I've been whining on this journal for 17 years now.

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Less frequent posts since time hardly exists any more.

5 weeks of pandemic life (yesterday).
4 weeks of lockdown and since I last interacted with anyone except jack.
19 days since I thought I maybe had symptoms.
13 days since I ended internal isolation with jack. He hasn't had any symptoms at all.
5 days since I last had symptoms I was significantly worried about.
3 days since I returned to occasionally leaving the house for exercise.
Also, day 12 of the Omer.

So, healthwise: I had about 5 days, 2nd April to 7th April, when my lungs hurt. Just continuously, not affected by taking deep breaths or posture or anything much else. I didn't have any other symptoms whatsoever. After that I had like a week of thinking I was better, except that the soreness returned intermittently. So I really wasn't sure when I could start counting to the end of isolation; the UK guidelines say 7 days from symptoms appearing, but everywhere else counts from the end of symptoms, and the symptoms were so minor and tailed off so gradually that I don't know where I'd place the 'end'.

On 16th April I had a weird episode of dizziness, much worse than I'd ever experienced before. I pretty much had to lie down for a couple of hours. I had no other symptoms, no tiredness, no fever, just plain vertigo. I looked it up on the internet as you do, and articles from before Covid-19 suggested that sometimes people get post-viral labyrinthitis, whereas more up-to-date information suggested dizziness might be a Covid-19 symptom. I don't know. If my lung soreness was in fact Covid-19 then I got the dizziness two weeks after symptoms appeared, which seems implausibly long.

We decided we could start going out from Sunday 19th. We're still staying away from shops and avoiding other people. It's a bit arbitrary but it is over two weeks since I first worried, and 5 days since I had even the vaguest trace of symptoms (except the dizziness which might or might not be relevant).

So, the rest of the bank holiday weekend when I was sad that I didn't get to do Easter family time with OSOs. I did in fact enjoy some restful time with jack. We played Gloomhaven and unwound a bit from work and Pesach. And we managed to get in some remote Stellaris with cjwatson; it pretty much Just Worked even though we last played most of a year ago and had a really old version of the game. We used Discord for voice chat and it was pleasant and companionable.

Two and a half days back at work, then I had to take an afternoon off to be dizzy, but I was fine by Friday. The lovely Reform Movement started up broadcasting again after a break for the festival, and I attended a couple of seminars (but haven't yet got back into the habit of attending communal morning prayer).

This recent weekend I had deliberately not made too many social plans. I had a nice date with jack on Friday evening. OSOs virtually joined me for the Saturday morning service, and I listened in to their church service on Sunday. The latter feels much less like being together because it's just a broadcast, whereas our service has a Zoom congregation and is a bit more interactive, but I still wanted to support my partners. We also managed a couple of nearly spontaneous games of online bridge using the Trickster Cards site, a matter of just sending a text saying, do you feel like playing and pretty much starting a game with minimal faff. The first was with my mother and brother who are quarantined together, and the second was with OSOs. And I've had a couple of phonecall dates with each of my non-domestic partners.

Going out for the first time after self-isolation was weird. We decided that we could justify going for a short drive to reach a place more pleasant and less crowded than Cambridge city. We went to Waterbeach in order to look at the river, but decided against walking along it because the path is too narrow. It was the most amazingly gorgeous day, just perfect spring weather. And during the three weeks I stayed at home the world has become gloriously green. There were a few people about enjoying the weather but it was far from crowded. We walked in a little nature reserve and it was really lovely.

But I found it emotionally hard. I was anxious about getting too close to people, I was anxious about getting in trouble for having fun and not moving fast enough. And I was really struggling with feeling sad about this perfect spring that we're mostly going to miss, and not knowing how many more seasons will just flow past while we're all stuck indoors, and the people who won't make it through quarantine to enjoy the outdoors again.

Today was a bit better, I returned to my pre-symptoms habit of walking across very quiet north Cambridge suburbs to OSOs' house. And we chatted with them on their doorstep and me more than 2m away in the street, and that made me feel better. I was a lot less angsty about going out of the house the second time than the first.

Last few days I've had fairly obvious hayfever but otherwise feel fine. There are 7 people known to me personally who have had pretty clear cases of Covid-19, and 26 including me who have had suspicious symptoms.

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I was really sad to learn of the death of Mel Baggs. I have been following Mel's writing for many years and learned a great deal about disability and activist communities.

In particular, Mel disabused me of the view of autism that says, autism is all very well if you're also highly intelligent, but it's a terrible tragedy to be autistic as well as intellectually disabled, or autistic and non-speaking, or "low-functioning". And in general lots of concrete ways of being a respectful fellow citizen towards the the kinds of disabled people who don't get much activism airtime.

It seems that Mel didn't die "of" Coronavirus in the strict sense of the word, but of complications of a number of other illnesses and conditions. Mel had posted a fair bit recently about not getting access to needed personal care as an indirect result of the pandemic and the dangerously inadequate official response to it. I don't know whether inadequate care was a contributory factor in Mel's death but it did cause a lot of suffering, and I have seen way too many reports of people not getting the care they need, and I'm not even that plugged in to the disability community.

Anyway. Mel was someone I admired greatly, and a huge influence on me, and the world is poorer.

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Keeping on keeping on.

7 weeks and change of pandemic life. That's a lot of weeks.
43 days lockdown, and no significant interactions except with my husband. Though 26 days since I gave up internal isolation and I have been interacting normally with him within the house for those 3 1/2 weeks.
18 days since I decided that any novel symptoms I had were mostly gone. I've had very occasional returns of the lung soreness, but very briefly and mildly to the point I'm not sure I'm not just deluding myself. During these 18 days I've been going out occasionally for exercise and fresh air, and jack has visited actual shops a couple of times to pick up things we needed faster than internet delivery could manage.
And day 27 of the Omer. I'm still not expecting plague lifting by day 33, though I know some countries are starting to relax some restrictions.

New lockdown activities: sfred and djm4's extremely moving partnership ceremony over Zoom on 25 April. It was exceptionally well coordinated, with a congregation of around 200 people. And even though the couple had initially told us the socializing part would be postponed until after the Reconnection, actually after the ceremony we just unmuted everybody and there was this amazing buzz of congratulations and people being pleased to see each other and little kids shrieking, just like at a real wedding.

Collaborative crossword solving with seekingferret. That was really fun, despite silght technical issues with Discord. I am not at all experienced with American-style crosswords (and sometimes was thrown by specifically American clues), but I contributed only a little less than my fair share.

Teaching three different Hebrew school classes over Zoom. The new ones, for my actual local cheder where I am formally employed as a teacher, are going less well than the established one with two boys from Stoke plus my partners' daughter. Some of the children are struggling because they've suddenly switched from "screens are evil and rot your brains" to "your entire education is now on screens (so good luck working out how to operate a smart phone!)". Others are just too young for online teaching to work well; my youngest class is Yr 4 which means some of them are not quite 9 and still need direct personal interaction from a trusted adult to hold their attention. I feel even more sorry than previously for people who are trying to teach infant school or even kindergarten online. And the most tech savvy kid is also the worst behaved; right now the set-up is such that I don't have moderator privs and it took her about 10 minutes to work out that she could grab the screen from me, and scribble rude drawings over my worksheets, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it technically.

Talking of people for whom tech is a barrier, I've also been involved in the community welfare programme, trying to help someone who really has no idea how to access the internet short of buying a computer and full broadband subscription. Not someone particularly ancient either, and never thought they would be the kind of person who receives welfare. But at least open to the idea that pandemic life will be better with an internet connection.

Zoom crafting, hosted by pseudomonas. He has a very good theory that it's nice to gently hang out with people, but while doing something rather than having the whole social event focused on chat. Definitely less exhausting than purely conversational Zoom parties, but still feeds my extrovert energies. I have added a few rows to my rather long-abandoned Möbius scarf project.

IRC. Slack is ok, Discord is ok, even Twitter is bearable if you curate your feed carefully. But it turns out that working with a flow of text based conversation in a window is just really soothing to my emotional state. I don't have to reply to or even read everything, but just knowing my people are there, and if I do want to join in the conversation, I can do so on a full-sized keyboard, is just brilliant.

Our veg box person, Cambridge Fruit Co. has now teamed up with a cake shop (and a butcher's, if you like that kind of thing), so we now get a random selection of cake with our random selection of fruit and veg. This week: avocados, a swede and a mango. Also new to our online shopping rotation: v expensive bread flour from former hipster café Stir. It's leading to perceptibly better breadmaker bread, and cheap bread flour isn't very available anyway, so for the moment it's worth the extra money.

Today I feel kind of physically miserable. I think it's mostly menstruation-related and not outside the range of normal for me. But emotionally mostly ok, I'm doing better at finding a balance between getting enough connection, and getting drained by too many video calls, or worse, arguing with people who are Wrong on the Internet because I'm starved of social connection.

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Well, nothing major to report this month, except at least we have some content: The conference I first showed my Reverse Emulation project at in 2018 (Deconstruct) finally posted the video of my talk, which was called "Improper Hierarchy." The talk is of course similar to the living room CRT video I put on youtube, but it might be interesting even if you've already seen that (watching it a year later, there are at least some funny ad-libbed parts IMO!). The video production is very high quality (in general the conference was very well run and the speaker experience in particular I heartily endorse) but also quite serious-seeming, so I like how it comes across as some bizarro-world TED talk.

This month I've made some progress on another video, which maybe I can wrap up this weekend. Nothing too grandeur, though. Sometimes hard to keep that under control!

Also: I played through Minit, which was a really excellent and creative little game (can finish it in an evening) that I super recommend. I just started The Messenger which definitely has some charms and surprises; I need to finish it before I can decide between "good" and "great" but I think I can at least recommend it if you like exploration-style platformers.

OK! I did manage to finish the video I described in the last few posts. It's this:

30 Weird Chess Algorithms: Elo World

I felt pretty down on this video as I was finishing it, I think mostly in the same way that one does about their dissertation, just because of the slog. I started it just thinking, I'll make a quick fun video about all those chess topics, but then once I had set out to fill in the entire tournament table, this sort of dictated the flow of the video even if I wanted to just get it over with. So it was way longer than I was planning, at 42 minutes, and my stress about this just led to more tedium as I would micro-optimize in editing to shorten it. RIP some mediocre jokes. But it turns out there are plenty of people on the internet who enjoy long-form nerdy content like this, and it was well-received, which is encouraging. (But now I am perplexed that it seems to be more popular than NaN Gates and Flip-FLOPS, which IMO is far more intetersting/original. I guess the real lesson is just make what you feel like making, and post it!) The 50+ hours programming, drawing, recording and editing did have the desired effect of getting chess out of my system for now, at least.

Since last post I played Gato Roboto which is a straightforward and easy but still very charming "Metroidvania." Now I'm working my way through Deux Ex: Mankind Divided, which (aside from the crashing) is a a very solid sequel to Human Revolution. Although none of these games is likely to capture the magic of the original (one of my all-time faves), they do definitely have the property that you can play them in ways that the developer didn't explicitly set out for you, and as you know I get a big kick out of that.

Aside from the video games, I've picked back up a 10 year-old project that I never finished because it was a little bit outside my skillset. But having gotten significantly better at electronics and CNC, it is seeming pretty doable now. Stay tuned!

Happy Thanksgiving!

One interesting thing that happened this month: A few weekends ago it was feeling cold in my office, so I thought about turning on a space heater, but why do that when I've got a 850W power supply hooked up under my desk that can provide a "useful" resistive load? My current projects don't have any long-running computations, so I fired up PrimeGrid, which is a distributed computing project that lets you hunt for prime numbers (etc.) using your stupidly overpowered home computer. Amazingly, the next day, I had discovered this prime:

It's a Proth prime, one of the several special forms of numbers that have efficient primality tests. This particular one is 466,320 decimal digits long, in fact big enough that when I discovered it, it was the 3461^st largest prime number known to mankind (see its entry in the list of Top 5000 Primes). As you know, computers are pretty fast these days, and there exist many nerds, so this number has already slipped 62 places to #3523.

Finding this on my second day was pretty lucky, although not really beginner's luck since in college I ran Prime95 ("Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search") on any computer I could get my hands on. You can see my historic page exhorting internet strangers to join the Tom7 prime team for example. Apparently we were once in the top 100 teams in the world, so I think I deserve a prime 20 years later, right?


I finally assembled my current project and it is kind of working! There are several things I can do to improve it, which I am trying, but at this point it at least does something interesting/funny enough to make into a video. Next the trick will be finding the right stopping point. I was hoping to get a lot done over Thanksgiving break (mercifully, not traveling this year), but (not mercifully) I immediately got sick and have spent most of my time playing Pokémon in bed or warming my toes on the prime-powered heat sink. So sad to finally have some free time but not have the energy. Oh, well!

Hello and happy new year! I’m currently at a party and basically forgot to post, which is fine because I didn’t finish anything this month! I did make progress on my project, but then also expanded the scope (as is my way) and then also ruined a part of it, both activities pretty much consuming all the free time of the holiday break with such excursions. I've still been running the prime-finding space heater as described in post 1175 but my luck has regressed to the mean and I have no new primes despite running for 30x longer than last time. The winter slows me down for sure. In the melancholy I played a few video games, which were unremarkable except for Fidel Dungeon Rescue, which I really like. It’s described as a roguelike, but it’s really a puzzle game. It won my heart when I convinced myself that one level was impossible, then implemented a solver for it, which made me realize I was missing something, but then convinced myself that it was still impossible, but then the solver solved it and proved my brain is soft.

Hello again! I got a little bit stuck on my most recent project because I don't have the right tools to do it the best way, which has created a sort of analysis-paralysis, but I like to think that one is wrapping up. Of course I still need to make a video which will take 9999 hours. Winter's computational space heater made a decent discovery, which is an Arithmetic Progression of Primes. An AP is some starting number x, and some positive stride s, where a progression of numbers in this sequence are all prime:

For example with x=3 and s=2, we have 3, 3+2, 3+2+2 prime (and then 3+2+2+2=9 is not prime), yielding an Arithmetic Progression of length 3, or "AP3". The longest such progression known is an AP27, the only one yet known found last year: for 27 consecutive primes! Only twelve AP26s are known,^* and my computer found an AP25: only 133 AP25s are known^* so it's a pretty lucky find, although of course people care a lot less about finding these than about finding huge primes (AP1s, if you will.)

^* Technically an AP27 contains two AP26s, and three AP25s (etc.) so these numbers undercount a little.


Aside from the secret projects and winter hibernation, I played a slightly-old puzzle game called Closure which was pretty good. Definitely an interesting mechanic that they get plenty out of, if perhaps with slightly sluggish controls. I also just started Luigi's Mansion 3 for the cozy-factor, but you probably don't need me to tell you about AAA franchise Nintendo titles. I rarely recommend TV on here, but the second season of Castle Rock was unexpectedly good, if you like that sort of thing (first season is fine but there's no reason to watch them in any particular order). OK byeeee

Well, April felt simultaneously short and long! I should have just posted these at the beginning of the month, my SIGBOVIK papers from 2020:

Is this the longest chess game? is another needless chess paper, here trying to figure out the longest possible legal game. There are several rules that make sure games can't go on forever, and some surprisingly subtle details/ambiguity to those rules. The whole game is of course included in the paper (17697 moves), but I was far from being the largest waste of space in this year's proceedings, as one provocateur had a paper with 150 pages of citations. Mathieu made a 5-hour video of the chess game I computed for his companion blog post.

What is the best game console? A market-based approach is a silly idea taken too far. It was a year in the making (mostly waiting) and didn't quite turn out the way I was expecting due to world events, but that's part of the "fun" I guess!

Conditional Move For Shell Script Acceleration was another collaboration with Jim (mostly his doing, but I like to lather on an additional patina of absurdity).

This month I have mostly been trying to keep sane and healthy during the shelter-in-place order. It's been harder than usual to find the energy to be creative, but I have had some spurts. I basically only leave the house to run (not going anywhere near other people). But I have been doing that pretty regularly, so between that and the prohibition against going out to bars and ice cream, I'd say I'm currently in the best I have been in ~6 years. Yesterday I claimed some course records for some Strava segments in my neighborhood! I also finished up Doom: Eternal, which was good but you pretty much already know what it's like and I'm playing Animal Crossing and haven't yet gotten sick of that. The timing for the release of that latter game couldn't have been more perfect, huh? Sometimes I need something with a little challenge, so I just started Nuclear Throne. I'm liking it but not sure if I have decided whether it's good enough to invest the time in to win (I almost always play games to the end but these randomized roguelikes demand a certain kind of potentially infinite investment. Like I never did beat the last boss in Wizard of Legend, and even in Dead Cells, which I loved, I had to settle for some modest personal criteria for "winning.") Any other recs? Could use a good Metroidvania perhaps?

В России за последние сутки выявили 10817 новых случаев заражения коронавирусом. Новых случаев заражения не зафиксировано только в одном из 85 российских регионов. Также отмечается, что более чем у 40 процентов людей с подтвержденным за последние сутки коронавирусом нет клинических проявлений болезни.

Мексиканская авиакомпания InterJet полностью перешла на использование только российских самолетов Sukhoi SuperJet 100 (SSJ-100). По мнению руководства InterJet, SSJ-100 идеально подходят для перевозок в условиях пандемии коронавируса. В настоящее время российские самолеты обслуживают шесть оставшихся маршрутов.